Articles

When cultural beliefs clash with science, a little humor and a little humility never hurts by David Westmoreland, Science Riot Board Member Reposted from Scientific American. “We believe that we came into existence when an ogress mated with a monkey. Is that possible?” The question comes from one of a hundred saffron-clad Tibetan monks sitting…

By Stephen E. Nash We’ve all been caught unawares by our digestive tract at one time or another. It happened to the Nash family several months ago. We were nearing the end of an extended road trip, driving down a secondary highway through a sparsely populated area of Colorado at night, when one of my…

“But why comedy?” I frequently get asked this by puzzled people and they have a point. With Science Riot, I’m advocating something pretty unusual: teaching scientists to be comedians and to use comedy as a tool for public outreach. Only a small portion of scientists do outreach at all and if you still struggle with…

Can you name a scientist who is alive today? Because 81% of the American public can’t name one. This is discouraging news for anyone who cares about science literacy, but it isn’t particularly helpful unless we allow ourselves to consider that maybe the public isn’t the problem. “We must have very different definitions for the word scientist.”…